Hi there
I sympathize with full-time film critics, I do, not just because they appear to be an endangered species, but because it must be getting difficult to figure out new ways to praise Pixar without resorting to recap, repetition, or flummoxed awe. Since the mild (and still thoroughly enjoyable) disappointment of Cars, they've made three movies in a row that screw with my ability to pick favorites out of their already-rich body of work. Up is one such movie, a lovely and buoyant cartoon that can stand with Ratatouille and Wall-E and the rest. It's one of the most purely emotionally affecting Pixar films -- check out, like everyone says, that dialogue-free four-minute sequence that takes Carl and Ellie from childhood to old age -- but also, to my surprise, one of their funniest. The Pixar animators have that old Looney Tunes gift for getting to the essence of animal characters, and having that essence seem perfectly true to their natures but also touchingly human. I'm not even a dog person, and I loved the dogs in this movie more than just about anything. The humans are pretty great, too.
A bunch of people wound up coming out to the movie with Marisa and me, and debating which Pixar movie that we love is in fact the least kid-friendly (I still say that's Ratatouille): Amanda, Nathaniel, Katie, Sara, Andrew & Abby. Plus Erin! Who was in town with her gentleman friend, and who I hadn't seen in years and who almost certainly caught showings of Toy Story 2 and/or Monsters, Inc. back at Wesleyan (that was when we were only getting a new Pixar movie every couple of years on average; their streak is even more amazing when you consider they've done four movies in four years and have three more slated through 2011). So it was great to hang out with the least-seen of my erstwhile Lawn Ave roommates.
After a one-year-old's birthday party on Saturday, Marisa and Rayme and Nathaniel and I went to check out Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's return to horror. Though Raimi got his start in the genre, his contributions have really been pretty nontraditional; the Evil Dead trilogy (a.) tells about two hours' worth of story over its three movies, all of which contain some degree of remaking of prior installments, (b.) is funnier, on average, than it is scary, and (c.) concludes with more of an action-fantasy with horror elements. Oh and (d.) is awesome, obviously. Darkman and The Gift have elements of horror, too, and there's that scene in Spider-Man 2 with Dr. Octopus going bezerk, but for a guy associated with low-budget horror, Raimi has spent just as much screentime or more doing superheroes or human drama (For the Love of the Game what what!).
Stylistically, Drag Me to Hell has a fair amount in common with the Evil Dead pictures, especially the second one: sly humor, splatstick, a zipping camera. But it's not nearly as much of an all-out deranged Evil Dead horror show; it keeps at least one foot in the real world, or at least the B-movie world (Evil Dead 2 is a B-movie too, of course, but, seriously, have you ever seen a B-movie that even approaches the experience of watching Evil Dead 2, which after about half an hour really only has one character, and features about an hour of sustained mayhem with a major Three Stooges influence?). Drag Me to Hell isn't so relentless; it's more like a "regular" B-movie that keeps getting hit with Raimi-style blasts of insanity, which is a giddily effective technique. I've also heard it compared to an old EC Comics story; I've never actually read any old horror comics, but that sounds pretty damn apt. To that end, I wish it had a little more to it; there are times when the story feels artificially stretched out to 90 minutes, and the story could've used another good turn at some point (not necessarily at the end, which is extremely effective, just somewhere along the way), but it's still the most fun horror movie I've seen in ages.
On Sunday, in keeping with the B-movie theme, Marisa and Rayme made me and Nathaniel watch Dolls, a beloved horror movie from their childhood that slightly predated Child's Play (Amanda was also on hand, but was neither inexperienced in Dolls as Nathaniel and I were, nor co-chair of the Must Watch Dolls Committee with the other Ardsley girls). It's definitely only 75 minutes along. Actually, it's a lot better than I would've guessed, given the peculiar way Marisa and Rayme have been hyping it for the past two to five years.
A movie I saw awhile back but is just coming out now (and will probably be gone by the end of the week): What Goes Up, which I reviewed for filmcritic.com (now property of AMC, woot!). In researching whether I had, in fact, seen every movie Hilary Duff has been in so far (answer: yes, except Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and several TV movies), and, as such, I could reasonably make the claim that What Goes Up is the absolute worst (answer: maybe; The Perfect Man was pretty awful, but probably not as nonsensical) I found out that she's co-starring in the next movie by the Polish brothers, the guys who did Twin Falls Idaho (unseen by me) and Northfork (pretty cool). Huh.
This week: another screening, some more reviews going up, and trying to get into a free Mandy Moore show tomorrow night before a non-free Art Brut show across town. It'll be a good training session for the three-show run coming up next week.
A bunch of people wound up coming out to the movie with Marisa and me, and debating which Pixar movie that we love is in fact the least kid-friendly (I still say that's Ratatouille): Amanda, Nathaniel, Katie, Sara, Andrew & Abby. Plus Erin! Who was in town with her gentleman friend, and who I hadn't seen in years and who almost certainly caught showings of Toy Story 2 and/or Monsters, Inc. back at Wesleyan (that was when we were only getting a new Pixar movie every couple of years on average; their streak is even more amazing when you consider they've done four movies in four years and have three more slated through 2011). So it was great to hang out with the least-seen of my erstwhile Lawn Ave roommates.
After a one-year-old's birthday party on Saturday, Marisa and Rayme and Nathaniel and I went to check out Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's return to horror. Though Raimi got his start in the genre, his contributions have really been pretty nontraditional; the Evil Dead trilogy (a.) tells about two hours' worth of story over its three movies, all of which contain some degree of remaking of prior installments, (b.) is funnier, on average, than it is scary, and (c.) concludes with more of an action-fantasy with horror elements. Oh and (d.) is awesome, obviously. Darkman and The Gift have elements of horror, too, and there's that scene in Spider-Man 2 with Dr. Octopus going bezerk, but for a guy associated with low-budget horror, Raimi has spent just as much screentime or more doing superheroes or human drama (For the Love of the Game what what!).
Stylistically, Drag Me to Hell has a fair amount in common with the Evil Dead pictures, especially the second one: sly humor, splatstick, a zipping camera. But it's not nearly as much of an all-out deranged Evil Dead horror show; it keeps at least one foot in the real world, or at least the B-movie world (Evil Dead 2 is a B-movie too, of course, but, seriously, have you ever seen a B-movie that even approaches the experience of watching Evil Dead 2, which after about half an hour really only has one character, and features about an hour of sustained mayhem with a major Three Stooges influence?). Drag Me to Hell isn't so relentless; it's more like a "regular" B-movie that keeps getting hit with Raimi-style blasts of insanity, which is a giddily effective technique. I've also heard it compared to an old EC Comics story; I've never actually read any old horror comics, but that sounds pretty damn apt. To that end, I wish it had a little more to it; there are times when the story feels artificially stretched out to 90 minutes, and the story could've used another good turn at some point (not necessarily at the end, which is extremely effective, just somewhere along the way), but it's still the most fun horror movie I've seen in ages.
On Sunday, in keeping with the B-movie theme, Marisa and Rayme made me and Nathaniel watch Dolls, a beloved horror movie from their childhood that slightly predated Child's Play (Amanda was also on hand, but was neither inexperienced in Dolls as Nathaniel and I were, nor co-chair of the Must Watch Dolls Committee with the other Ardsley girls). It's definitely only 75 minutes along. Actually, it's a lot better than I would've guessed, given the peculiar way Marisa and Rayme have been hyping it for the past two to five years.
A movie I saw awhile back but is just coming out now (and will probably be gone by the end of the week): What Goes Up, which I reviewed for filmcritic.com (now property of AMC, woot!). In researching whether I had, in fact, seen every movie Hilary Duff has been in so far (answer: yes, except Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and several TV movies), and, as such, I could reasonably make the claim that What Goes Up is the absolute worst (answer: maybe; The Perfect Man was pretty awful, but probably not as nonsensical) I found out that she's co-starring in the next movie by the Polish brothers, the guys who did Twin Falls Idaho (unseen by me) and Northfork (pretty cool). Huh.
This week: another screening, some more reviews going up, and trying to get into a free Mandy Moore show tomorrow night before a non-free Art Brut show across town. It'll be a good training session for the three-show run coming up next week.